Featured is Part 10of
13 of the review/summary of The Sacred
Mirror: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy, edited by
John J. Prendergast, Peter Fenner, and Sheila Krystal.
Information about this book is available at http://tinyurl.com/4nxfq

Also featured are quotations from C. Kim, George
Carlin, and Margaret Cho. They might be viewed as
edgy, controversial and offensive to some, while humorous
and freedom-loving to others.

The Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy

Chapter 10Deconstructing the
Self: The Uses of Inquiry in Psychotherapy and Spiritual Practice

~ ~ ~

Personal Experiences and Sources

Bodian studied Zen intensely in the early 70's, up to 1982,
when he pursued his own psychotherapy and studied psychology in
graduate school. "I never felt that Zen offered a complete
approach to spiritual and psychological development. In
particular I noticed that despite numerous deep spiritual
insights, I continued to respond to certain situations with
inexplicable anger, sadness, and anxiety."

Bodian learned the standard psychotherapeutic interview as a
new mode of inquiry. The limitation of this approach was that it
created new layers of stories. While studying
psychology he met Jean Klein, a master of Advaita. Bodian had a
powerful awakening under Klein that deepend and stabilized over
ten years. But there was still a split between the insight and
the patterns of thinking and behavior that were known as
limitation and suffering.

Finally he encountered The Work of Byron Katie. "Under
the influence of (Byron Katie's) approach I finally discovered
the already-exisiting, inherent integration of awareness and the
contents of awareness as a truly nondual, undivided
reality."

"The inquiry that I describe in this essay, which now
arises naturally with my clients, draws upon The Work, the
self-inquiry of Advaita Vedanta, and the phenomenological
investigation of experiential psychotherapy."

The Uses of Inquiry in Nondual Wisdom Traditions

Bodian refers to Donald Rothberg, who described five modes of
spiritual inquiry. Three apply to the nondual: systematic
contemplation, radical questioning, and critical deconstruction.
Bodian speaks of these three modes in relation to Zen,
Dzogchen/Mahamudra, and Advaita Vedanta.

The following quotations are from the subsection entitled The
Purpose of Inquiry in a Nondual Approach to Psychotherapy:

"Nondual therapy is not a special method, approach, or
set of techniques, and certainly not a particular viewpoint.
There are as many nondual therapies as there are nondual
therapists. It's actually an interaction between two people that
occurs in the absence of a viewpoint, agenda, or interpretive
lens; if it's truly nondual, it unfolds in a shared,
resonant space or field in which the apparent separation between
client and therapist has dissolved -- or, more accurately,
doesn't apply. "Interventions such as inquiry arise as a
natural response to a felt-from-the-inside dissonance or
discrepancy between how the client interprets reality and reality
itself. This discrepancy, based on the illusory self, is the root
of all suffering."

"In its deconstructive approach, nondual therapy
resembles other depth psychotherapies, such as the
existential-humanistic approach taught by James Bugental. But
instead of challenging and disclosing the client's 'self and
world construct system' (Bugental's term), only to replace it
with a more 'authentic' construct, nondual therapy gradually --
and gently, since there's no agenda, just a natural orientation
toward the truth -- deconstructs this system entirely. "

"Unlike cognitive-behavioral therapy, which works to
replace negative, dysfunctional cognitions with more positive,
functional ones, nondual therapy doesn't necessarily discriminate
between good and bad cognitions or try to replace some with
others. Rather, the fundamental understanding is that no
cognitions or concepts of any kind can possibly encompass reality
as it is, which is ultimately ungraspable by the mind."

Uses of Inquiry in a Nondual Approach to Therapy

"The foundation of a nondual approach to therapy is
'systematic contemplation,' the process of 'being with'
experience with bare attention, without judgment or
evaluation."

"'Radical inquiry' occurs in nondual therapy in the form
of direct questions." Such questions (e.g., 'Who are you?',
'What is experiencing this emotion right now?') "directly
point not to any object of awareness, but to the background
awareness itself, the vast, spacious context in which experience
takes place and that ultimately constitutes the client's true
self."

"Rather than pointing directly to the context or
background of experience, 'critical deconstruction' addresses the
'self and world construct system' that tends to obscure this
background." Byron Katie's four questions form one of the
most potent forms of critical deconstruction:

Is this story true?

Can you absolutely know that it is true?

How do you react when you think that thought or hold to
that story?

Who would you be without it?

Applying Inquiry: Case Example

Bodian describes his work with a client who complained of
extreme and sometimes suicidal depression. Even during the
period of therapy she had attempted suicide, though it was
apparently more a call for help. In this case example the author
demonstrates his use of the different classes of inquiry.

Ultimately it could be said: "Rather than being
'deep-rooted neuroses' requiring long-term psychotherapy, as many
conventional psychological theories teach, her problems ceased to
exist for her in those moments when she stopped investing them
with psychic energy and identification. To some this approach may
seem like spiritual bypassing, but the truth is that exploring
her issues in a traditional psychological way for many years had
just made them seem more solid, real, and entrenched in (her)
eyes and had provided more ammunition for her perfectionistic,
judgmental, self-loathing mind. Now that she could hold her
experience in an aware, expanded space and recognize her stories
for what they were, she rapidly went from an agitated depression
with active suicidality to a mostly calm, relaxed frame of mind
in which the stories occasionally grabbed her but didn't retain
their grip for very long."

C. Kem

"I feel sorry for people who don't gold pan. When
they wake up in the
morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day."
-- C. Kem

"When I read about the evils of prospecting , I gave up
reading." --
C. Kem

"Volunteer emergency personel are like toilet paper- no one
really
understands how valuable they are until they're really
needed." -- C.
Kem, Jan. 11th, 2004

"...There is a unique relation between ignorance and
stupidity. With
ignorance one has the chance to learn. One has the chance
to think.
One has the chance to change. But with stupidity, one
cannot learn.
One cannot think. And one cannot change. Sadly, it is
in not-so rare
cases where it is not as much that they cannot as it is they will
not.
And in those cases stupidity becomes death. For one
cannot live if
one will not learn, think or change....It is the human spirit and
imagination that has made the progress mankind has reached.
And it is
in the mental death brought on from the stupidity and death that
is
certainly bound to destroy us. How a non-living entity such
as
stupidity can grow and infect an entire planet is
astounding. Soon,
what astounds us will scare us. And when it scares us, it
may very
well be too late...."
-- C. Kem, speech on human ethics and morality
in international politics, College of Eastern Utah, Blanding
Utah, 1999

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time,
somewhere,
someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those
people over
there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job
done...."

I have a problem with the Ten Commandments. Here it is: Why
are there ten? We dont need
that many. I think the list of commandments was deliberately and
artificially inflated to
get it up to ten. Its clearly a padded list.

Heres how it happened: About five thousand years ago, a
bunch of religious and political
hustlers got together to figure out how they could control people
and keep them in line.
They knew people were basically stupid and would believe anything
they were told, so
these guys announced that GodGod personallyhad given
one of them a list of ten
commandments that he wanted everyone to follow. They claimed the
whole thing took place
on a mountaintop, when no one else was around.

But let me ask you something: When these guys were sittin
around the tent makin all
this up, why did they pick ten? Why ten? Why not nine, or eleven?
Ill tell you why.
Because ten sounds important. Ten sounds official. They knew if
they tried eleven, people
wouldnt take them seriously. People would say, Whatre
you kiddin me? The Eleven
Commandments? Get the fuck outta here!

But ten! Ten sounds important. Ten is the basis for the
decimal system; its a decade.
Its a psychologically satisfying number: the top ten; the
ten most wanted; the ten
best-dressed. So deciding on ten commandments was clearly a
marketing decision. And its
obviously a bullshit list. In truth, its a political
document, artificially inflated to
sell better.

Im going to show you how you can reduce the number of
commandments and come up with a
list thats a bit more logical and realistic. Well
start with the first three, and Ill
use the Roman Catholic version because those are the ones I was
fed as a little boy. .

I AM THE LORD THY GOD, THOU SHALT NOT HAVE STRANGE GODS BEFORE
ME. .

THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD IN VAIN.
.

THOU SHALT KEEP HOLY THE SABBATH.

Okay, right off the bat, the first three commandmentspure
bullshit. Sabbath day,
Lords name, strange gods. Spooky
language. Spooky language designed to scare and
control primitive people. In no way does superstitious mumbo
jumbo like this apply to the
lives of intelligent, civilized humans in the twenty-first
century. You throw out the
first three commandments, and youre down to seven. .

HONOR THY FATHER AND MOTHER.

This commandment is about obedience and respect for authority;
in other words its simply
a device for controlling people. The truth is, obedience and
respect should not be
granted automatically. They should be earned. They should be
based on the parents (or
the authority figures) performance. Some parents deserve
respect. Most of them dont.
Period. Were down to six.

...that's it for now, purchase the book when it comes out on
Oct 12...

~ ~ ~

How to spot a fake George Carlin piece on the internet:
"Here's a rule of thumb, folks: Nothing you see on the
Internet is mine unless it came from one of my albums, books, HBO
shows, or appeared on my website. If you see something with my
name on it, and you really need to find out if it's mine, post a
question on my bulletin board. But only if it's
really important to you; don't fuck around with me for a
lark." http://www.georgecarlin.com/

This poses many challenges of course, especially because I
have put myself in a very
un-shy profession, which forces me not only to speak in front of
thousands of strangers
daily, it constantly brings me into the company of people I have
never met before.

It is difficult for me to have conversations, which is
something that I am actively
seeking to change. Whenever I am put in a situation where I am
sharing a space with
someone I don't know, I try to get to know them, almost
aggressively, as if I could make
up for all those years of self imposed isolation.

It is strange how we can be solitary in the midst of crowds of
people. I have lived this
way for my entire life. Aloneness is not an uncomfortable thing
for me, in fact, it feels
a bit too much like home. So I attempt to venture out as much as
I can. Of course, there
is a natural resistance to it, but fighting my own nature in this
case I believe is a
positive thing. Besides, I am learning a tremendous amount.

I was driving into New York City last night, and the guy
taking me was amongst the
countless people we routinely ignore every day. He was young,
obviously foreign, the
driver - it is always seemingly okay to talk about people in
certain service professions
such as the driver or the maid - as if they are somehow not
people, but their job. They
go unseen, and yet many of them have fascinating lives,
extraordinary adventures to tell
of. It is like they are part of a mystical realm, that they have
slipped into these
quiet, silent identities to go undercover. The incognito of lower
class employment is an
effective cloak for any dagger one might wish to hide. These are
those who we do not
think of, look at, talk to, yet these are those who have made
vast differences and shaped
the world, at least their part of it, immensely.

My young friend had an Albanian accent, which I would not have
discerned as Albanian,
unless he told me he had come from there. He worked 12 hours a
day and got stuck in
traffic that clients he picked up late would never understand. He
didn't like New York
because it was too fast, too hard, too expensive of a city,
admittedly a wonderland, but
only for the rich and idle. He regretted that the life here
changed people, that Albanian
girls he once knew as modest and proper were now showing their
legs without a care, but
he could look at them and in a moment their confidence would
dissipate, for their common
culture and upbringing would shine like a sudden spotlight
beaming down from overhead and
shock them into the temporary blindness of truth.

He is Muslim and he loves his faith, yet cannot make the time
for prayer when he is
trying to negotiate a town car through Midtown at rush hour. He
doesn't understand why
the Republicans are going to descend on the city that they
conveniently forgot. Lots of
New Yorkers are enraged that Bush is using 9/11 as a major
bargaining chip in his
campaign, arming himself with NYC beloved like Guiliani and
trying to make the election
all about his personal crusade against terror, when in fact Bush
all but abandoned the
city after the tragedies, stiffing them on funding, opposing the
creation of a 9/11
commission, and then refusing to testify once it was formed.

My friend wants to know how a man that claims to be "of
God" can possibly do so much evil
in God's name. He asks, "Isn't George Bush afraid of
God?" I guess not.